who is the story spinner?

Phil McDermott

was an actor for ten years before I told my first official story. I was immediately hooked. The venue was an after school play centre. The audience was a mixed group of children who had been told that if they didn’t stop misbehaving they would have to listen to the storyteller. The room was cramped and dark and I was the only adult present. I told a story that my dad used to tell and after a few minutes the crowd began to quieten. It was then that the magic began. I first noticed the silence. Then I saw that they were not looking at me. They were looking in my direction. They were watching the story.

The story happens in the space between the teller and the watcher. The teller, unlike an actor is not asking the watchers to look at him. He is saying to the watchers, “Look at this.” Both the audience and the storyteller conjure up the story between them. It is an act of shared communication. The storyteller is a guide through the story but the audience provides all the images.

Storytelling now takes me to schools, libraries, and festivals, and I tell in woods, fields, clubs, dinner parties, on ships and in upper rooms. I share stories with other storytellers from all over these islands and around the world. When I have a new story to tell or an old near forgotten one to dust off I am so eager to share it, I look for any opportunity to tell it.

None of the experiences of my life are without merit as a storyteller. I can use them all - climbing trees and falling, humiliation in class or among strangers, even long days of utter boredom. Nothing is wasted. The mundane becomes riveting; the ordinary becomes fantastical.

As a storyteller I am engaging in an integral part of human existence, the sharing of experience, real or imagined, in a communal and ancient art form. “The Story Spinner” is an exciting opportunity for me to practise this primordial activity within the framework of a 21st century medium.

The older I get, the better I become at disappearing and letting the story tell itself. This however is not as selfless as it seems because if there is one experience more satisfying than the imagination stretching satisfaction of watching a story - it is telling one.”

Phil has been telling stories full time in Primary Schools for nearly 15 years and has been rated ‘Excellent’ by Ofsted.